Nearly two weeks ago (June 10, 2015 to be exact), I received some news that has forever altered my life.

But first let me back up to the week before that. June 2 I celebrated my 38th birthday. It was a great birthday. I was at work, but a coworker had scooted away around lunch time (which is nothing unusual), but returned along with half of the office, singing happy birthday with a great big cake for me. It was all done with such warmth and sincerity that it was easily one of my best birthdays. I had people calling and texting me that I hadn’t heard from in awhile. It filled me with such a feeling of being loved and cared about.

This was a welcomed change of pace after an incredibly challenging year both professionally as well as personally. My girl kitty dying, starting a new job after nearly 6 years, moving a month after starting the new job, a series of events that led to me kicking my beloved 19 year old son out of the house and he went to go live with my mom, one of my step dads dying (which hit me harder than I would’ve previously imagined), finding out my dad’s colon cancer had returned, and then having to work triply hard so as to not lose my job right around the Christmas holidays.

Which I did manage to keep, but I paid a steep price for it with my health. After months of dragging my knuckles on the ground I finally went into the doctors and found that I had middle ear infections and was immediately put on round 1 of antibiotics and loaded up with all kinds of other things. I was told that it was probably going to take a 2nd round and that it may take awhile to get better and to just be patient with the process.

I hadn’t taken an actual vacation in over two years, and it was around this time that I realized I was in dire need of some time off. I started to feel very strongly that I wanted . . . needed to take off 2 weeks in June to go see Jay in The Netherlands. It’s been over 3 years since we first met, and my god have we been through some shit together. We weren’t even on speaking terms with each other when I first felt the desire to go see him for a couple of weeks.

I was so worn down by life at this point, that I was able to actually start seeing beyond my own bullshit to my real and true feelings. I had let unimportant things get in the way of our relationship. I wanted to try again. Luckily, he felt the same. I booked the trip and was scheduled to leave June 5th for two weeks. After which, I would have a week at my current job assignment and then scheduled to begin a new assignment on July 1, which I’m very excited about.

This was my life as I knew it leading up to June 10th, in which I found myself sitting next to Jay on the couch when I received the fateful news. And thank god I was, because heaven help me if I had been sitting by myself in my apartment in the Seattle area upon hearing what I did.

I was alerted to the fact that *something* had happened but wasn’t given any details surrounding it. Due to the time difference and the fact that I hadn’t told everyone I was traveling internationally, I woke up to frantic “Are you okay?!” messages from my brother and a missed call from my mother. Initially I remained calm and speculated on what the problem could be, with Jay. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to panic because it was all highly unusual and made no sense.

Right as I was getting ready to wake up all of North America in order to find out what in blue blazes was going on, I received a text from my mother that simply read, “I tried to call. Look up komo news Bjorn Anderson.”

Can I just stop here for a moment and say that these are the absolute last kind of words that a mother ever wants to see?

Something bad had happened to my baby. My boy. I didn’t yet know what, but I did know that it wasn’t going to be happy news such as, “19 year old wins Powerball lottery!”

I imagined a number of horrible things, including a terrible car accident. I was already falling apart, my entire body shaking like a tree in a hurricane, crying and saying no, no, no, no, no not my boy, not my baby . . . Jay grabbing ahold of me and trying to hold me still, letting me know I didn’t have to look yet if I didn’t want to . . . but I had to. I had to know my son’s fate. I had to know if he still lived or if I had lost him.

In the days that followed, I was most haunted by the scene I first saw in the news clip, unable to comprehend it. Watching people on the news I don’t even know, talking about my son. This boy I had given birth to. This young man that I love with all of my heart and that I had spent the last 19 years of my life dedicated to caring for and raising until last September . . . was now being paraded before me in handcuffs and a prison uniform . . . for the attempted murder of my mother.

I’ll leave it up to you to look up the details of their story if you so choose.

I’ve returned to the States, and today I return to work . . . but this will be my final year here.

I’ve lived the majority of my life on my own. Soldiering through crisis after crisis with no one to depend on but myself. But this absolutely crossed a line with me. If it wasn’t for the care, love, patience, and support given to me by Jay and his family . . . I wouldn’t still be here. Maybe in body . . . but me . . . the soul and spirit inside of me, would no longer be in this world.

It was made very clear to me that my new home is there and where I belong now. I’ve returned only to start wrapping my life up here and to give time for us to make all of the necessary arrangements and planning.

My main reason for sharing what’s happened in this way is because I’d rather get it all out in the open for everyone to see. I want my friends, coworkers, and family to all be aware of this huge transition that I am in because I don’t want to be isolated by it. I don’t want to feel like I have to hide this big secret from everyone and be alone in it.

I don’t want to be isolated from any of you due to my sorrow and grief, which allows me to also openly share with you my joy and happiness of my upcoming wedding and move overseas. These things have always gone hand in hand in my life. A paradox of simultaneous deep grief and unbridled joy.

There’s no reason for me to hide any of it, as they are both a part of life. I wish to share both with you, so that no part of me has to hide in the darkness anymore and feel lonely.

Although, much of that loneliness has already been alleviated by my soon to be husband, Jay. We’ve begun to move in sync with each other, switching my worldview to one centered in *us* instead of *I*. This is brand new for me. I’ve never known this feeling before. I feel that it really suits me. I feel like it’s something that I’ve been longing for and missing all along.

In the coming days, weeks, months I wish to openly share this transition. This bittersweet goodbye to an old life and hello to a new life. A death and rebirth in mid-swing.

I felt more of myself come through during this video than I’ve felt in a very long time. My god did it feel good to get out. There was a full hearted, present, and enthusiastic dance that ensued through my house for a little while afterwards (with music of course), moving that Aries energy through me.

Reaching this part of me felt like fresh oxygen getting into my body. It was magnificent. When I feel like this, when I feel like me, I don’t give a flying french fry what anyone thinks about it because it’s from my heart. I know and feel it so deeply within me that it doesn’t matter if I was criticized and told I was wrong by every individual on the planet. That’s when I know I’m being true to self.

This is SO much closer to the real me. This is what I’ve been trying to get at and un-repress. It’s just now surfacing and so there will be a few more bumpy trial and errors as I adjust, just like it took a little bit at the beginning of this video for me to really get there). This was me starting to pierce through my Pluto & Saturn in my chart, through my fears/terrors – as well as my Chiron (deepest wound).

I did this video last night, but I’m just now posting it. It’s not my favorite video. I restarted it 3 times and had to fight throughout to not just completely give up on the video, and then it’s long on top of it. (Jenn, you’re such a great salesperson, how could I not watch it with such a great endorsement). I’m trying to make sense of things for myself at the moment regarding things going on both in the greater world as well as myself personally.

I say nonsensical things like, “It’s like bridge under water.” When I’m in this ‘trying to figure it out’ phases, I say a lot of things in an effort to try and connect things to see what is really trying to be shown or said by something bigger than me. So some of the things I say are fleeting and not necessarily *true*, but just fluffing up all of the pieces that seemed to be involved to see what goes together. I am feeling out how things feel when saying them to distinguish whether it belongs in the equation or not. This is a process I go through looking for the bread crumbs that relate together to show me the direction I should be going.

This is me in flux, in extreme flexibility. I’m not actually judging people and events, I’m just feeling them out. I hear myself constantly trying to clarify what I mean when I say anything that may suggest that I am being unfair about something I say about other people (such as coworkers) in my life. I don’t want the things I say to be taken out of context, I don’t want to hurt other’s feelings, and no I don’t want to be unfair to other people because I’ve been on the receiving end of that far too much. But at the same time, it totally throws off my flow about what I’m trying to say because whatever I’m saying about them isn’t the point that I’m trying to get to.

I definitely halt my expression by trying to be too sensitive about what I say about others in my life, like I don’t get to have my own perspective or opinion about how I am experiencing my own life. I think that plays into me feeling like I don’t get to have my own feelings. I do tend to get attacked when I try to express how situations are making me feel that involve other people. I’m sure it’s something to do with the way I go about doing it, my presentation or perhaps the people I’ve surrounded myself with in the past. Some people will attack me for trying to say my side, and when I get upset about it, they’ll tell me to not take it so personally . . . and then my feelings really get hurt because it seems like them attacking me for having my own feelings, was them taking it personally.

I struggled in this video by not letting myself stop it or give up and by attempting to say what I’m really feeling even if it gets misinterpreted or misunderstood and so it’s a very uncomfortable video for me and it was even harder to make myself publish it and now post it. I did keep filtering myself and trying to be “fair” to everyone and so there’s moments where I start to break through that and just say what I’m really feeling and then moments where I go back to restricting myself or feeling ashamed of what I’m saying. This is all really good for me. This is further helping me get past worrying about other’s responses or reactions to me.

It helps every time I get a favorable or supportive response, because it starts to rewrite in me what usually happens when I express myself. It will eventually reach a point where I won’t be able to say that people respond to me unfavorably because it will no longer be true for me. While I could get to a place of not caring about what other’s say on my own, I don’t have to fight quite so hard to do it when I start receiving different responses from others than what I’m used to. My audience tends to be very silent and for the most part I’ve come to peace with that, but I’m seeing how much better and easier it is for me to push through when someone does respond in a more supportive way such as a recent commenter, Supreet, has been doing. He says things in a more open, Aries-like way, and not so judgmental or closed and I can’t say how much I appreciate it. His sharing his thoughts that people normally keep to themselves, does help give me courage to keep trying. It does help me feel like I’m less alone in my fight and struggle to find my true voice and express it without fear.

It helps me see that it’s a two way street. I’ve always taken responsibility for all my relationships failing because I didn’t know that the other person was suppose to contribute more to the relationship. Whenever someone starts to contribute or share from their side, I feel such a burden come off of my shoulders, like it’s not ALL up to me. I don’t have to do all of the work for things to happen or work out. Having that contrast from what I normally experience with others, shines such a light on what I’ve been really dealing with. Others don’t show up for life or for their relationship with me. They are checked out and so yes I am left alone. It’s not all my fault.

At any rate, here’s the video, and when I get more time I’ll come back to give a couple of links for the earthquake that I spoke about in the video.

Edit to add: Here’s a link to the video where the man walks through the town right after the earthquake has happened.

And here’s another one with the view over the rooftops. Since then, they’ve added a lot of annoying boxes making it hard to see the actual video, but I just wanted to point to this one specifically since I spoke about it in my video.

And one more with a compilation of 3 different videos. The 3rd video, is one where I dreamt of an identical street and thoroughfare about a year or so ago.

Typically I only show or share my more upbeat and optimistic self, or sometimes my angry I’m not going to take anymore garbage self. It’s for good reason that I don’t typically share the side of me that I do in this video, but I don’t want to hide her anymore because she’s a gigantic part of me. I usually disappear from public view when this part of me is on the surface, but that makes me feel alone, so I’m going to try a different way. I’m going to share her with you too.

I have always felt this deep hurt and sorrow in me, and it gets worse as the conditions on Earth get worse. It’s always been present in me. It’s not depression, I’ve had that . . . that is another animal completely. I have found that I go into depression when I don’t acknowledge this other deeper part of me. I also feel that it is an appropriate feeling and response to what is going on everywhere. Sure, I could numb or block it all out, but that would numb and block out my joy as well.

Also, while I’m always feeling it in me, it isn’t always quite so close to the surface. But when it does well up, I’ve learned to move out of the way and let it happen.

So here’s another video. And on it I mention my son coming over, but plans got cancelled, which is alright. I stopped at the craft store earlier and have origami and coloring books to keep me having fun. Oh! And I also got to pick up my flute from the music shop today since the repairs were done. So all is well. 🙂

I, as my own sovereign being, have my very own feelings. Feelings that I get to feel for no other reason than that they exist.

My issue is that at every turn, I am told in some shape, way, or form that I am wrong in my feelings. Not outright. Nobody is outright saying, “Hey Jenn! You’re an effing liar!” No. I would actually prefer if people did that, because that is something I recognize and understand how to fight.

I am surrounded by people that I love very much. People who do not think very highly of themselves. Who think less of themselves than they really are. They are completely and thoroughly convinced that they are undeserving and unworthy of being loved.

I feel people at the Soul level (Neptune/Moon in Sag. conjunction). I feel the Truth of a person. I feel my Soul and my Soul feels their Soul. I know my heart. I know what I know and I know what I feel.

When I feel love for someone, and I share that feeling with them, whether in the feelings in my words or in my presence, it is genuine. It’s from my Soul. My Big Momma Heart.

I don’t have an ulterior motive. I’m not thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll be here for you now in your hard time so that you are here for me in my hard time.’ I’m not thinking anything. I’m simply being, emoting, existing in that moment with you. The only thing I wish for and want, is for what I’m giving, what I’m offering . . . to be received with an open heart.

That is the absolutely most respectful thing that could be done in response to when I go to give of myself in that way. When the person allows it into them, it fills my heart with warmth and love, and what better gift could a person be given than to be filled with warmth and love?

But do you know what I get met with instead?

I am met with people closed to receiving. They think so little of themselves, they refuse to allow anyone to love or comfort them. All they have are excuses, excuses, excuses. They think themselves broken beyond repair. They think nobody can help them or save them. They’re special in that nobody can reach them or help them. “Yeah, but in my case . . . ”

It’s not true. I can see and feel that it’s not true. I can feel their Soul asking for help. “Please help me.” But the mother ‘effin humans themselves? God save us all, you get in your own stupid way!

Seriously. In that situation, of the two of us, who do you think is in a better place to have a more healthy and realistic perspective? So, if something in me says, “This person is in need of care and comfort.” and then the person runs a play that says they are undeserving of being loved or cared for . . . well, don’t you think that’s your problem right there? You never let love or care in?

And what it immediately says to me, to my feelings, is that my feelings are wrong. I feel that you need love and care, and you don’t believe it for any reason whether consciously or subconsciously, and then you proceed to try to convince ME that you don’t need or deserve love or care? Then you sir (or madam) are attempting to tell me that my feelings are wrong, and that does not sit well with me.

You can run around and think and feel whatever stupid nonsense you want to, that is your own damn business. But don’t you DARE waste any of your time or energy trying to convince me or make me believe that I shouldn’t love you. Don’t you DARE try to belittle or even hint to me that I am not allowed to fully feel my feelings of love for you just because you believe so LITTLE in yourself! I don’t care if you hate yourself, you do NOT get to tell me that I don’t love you because of your OWN BULLSHIT!

I’ve been sitting at my new dining table, working on a puzzle. I should be going to bed. As I’ve been piecing together the Geishas in my puzzle, I’ve been thinking, wondering about my life.

The dance poses of Geisha have always stirred something in my soul. Even as I sit still and silent and stare at the artistic images of them in the quiet of my home, I can feel my soul mimicking and moving in a slow and understated grace. My soul understands something about them that I do not. It remembers something that I do not.

I feel for them what an adult might feel for their childhood, if it was a happy one. An ache in the heart for something that can’t be brought back. Homesickness for a lost home.

Just me and ghosts of geishas conversing in silence.

I was wondering with them why it’s been so long since I’ve felt truly inspired in my writing. Why I’ve stopped feeling any satisfaction from it.

It feels like I write to a black void.

I share because it is my nature to. Even if I was the last human on Earth, I would feel compelled to communicate and share.

I’m not entirely sure how much different it would feel to me if I was the last human on Earth. As it is, I’ve long since resorted to communing with the trees . . . the wind . . . clouds . . . animals . . . even bugs (if only to respectfully ask them to respect my space and leave . . . which they do).

I know people have tried to hear and understand me. I don’t mean to dismiss or invalidate others in my life. They are doing their best, I know. I love them.

But I’ve felt more seen, and known, and loved by clouds that were passing by, than I have by another human. The trees have time for me and listen with open hearts. They are not defensive or caught up in looking good or being right.

The wind is honest in it’s expression. It has no reason to cover up or hide.

I’m not saying that people don’t care for me, I know that’s not true, they care for me in the only way they know how. But in comparison with what it’s like to commune with nature, humans are so disconnected from themselves. How could I possibly expect humans to see me when they aren’t even aware that they can’t see themselves.

They are wrapped in hurt, pain, conditioning and they try to label it as “being themselves” . . . but it is not who they really are.

People seemed to have lost the ability to discern when someone is speaking from the heart and when someone is merely mimicking someone who is speaking from the heart. They all get thrown into the same cauldron and treated the same. It’s a shame.

I don’t feel like there is anything I could share of myself that would make any difference in the world or even be heard above all of the noise.

I know I have great value, but I do not feel valuable to this world.

I also know that greater peace comes to me when I am able to accept people and the world just as it is, and stop thinking that I have any role to play in helping others find their way. People will find their own way without my help, just as they have from the dawn of time.

I am content enough in my connection to life. Who knows, maybe even more happy than the happiest humans pretend to be.

I had another interesting dream last night (awww Mercury in Pisces, I love you).

Within the dream, I watched as a group started to pack up a mobile museum into the back of a large pickup truck. I don’t know whether it was the mascot or what, but there was a live horse that was a part of this group. They had packed him into the back of the truck first . . . like he was one of the inanimate objects of the museum.

He was laying on his left side. His legs folded up and against the side of the truck closest to me. He had straps going across to secure him and keep him from moving around too much during the trip. They were going to pack the rest of the things in around him. Someone was giving him a food dish, and said that he’d also need water so he didn’t die.

During all of this, my dream became more lucid. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I was just observing. But something was pulling on my feelings about it.

I never stopped looking at the horse . . . he was an off white color. I very slowly continued to approach the vehicle as I tried to understand what was bothering me.

He just laid there. He had just let them arrange him however he needed to be without fight or struggle.

This wasn’t setting well with me. But based on the situation and how everything appeared . . . how everyone acted . . . there was nothing wrong. Everything was exactly right and proper.

But I had a distant memory nagging at me . . . “but where is his spirit?”

I had this distant knowing or memory of horses not being like this. That at one time horses were symbolic of being wild and running free.

Why was it going against what this reality was showing me? Why did I keep getting glimmers of a feeling like I wanted to cry? Why did something not feel right about this?

I looked into the horse’s eye. I felt a connection with the horse. It pulled on something deep within me that I had forgotten. The feeling of wanting to cry kept coming and going from me like breathing.

The deeper I went into the connection between me and the horse, the stronger the need to cry became. The more a forgotten memory started to come back to me. The more I started to become aware of something so incredibly painful inside of me that I had purposely forgotten in order to get relief from it.

But it was also something I desperately missed. Within that pain was something that I missed with all of my heart.

“His will . . . his will was broken.”

My will . . . my own will was broken when I was younger.

When trying to domesticate a horse . . . they must be “broken”. To break an animal or a person is to break their own personal will in order to do the will of another.

There’s refining someone’s will in order to fit into society and get along with others. That’s the whole Aries –> Libra axis. When we’re first born, we have raw personal will. As we grow older, we learn how to refine it into something more polished and hopefully more beautiful . . . but the person should still retain something of themselves in that process.

They should still have their own personal will. This is the energy or thing that motivates us. It’s how we know what we want. It’s how we go after or approach challenges. Do we go after what we want . . . or do we let the forces around us decide for us what we’re going to do or not do?

The wilder something is . . . the harder it is to break. There are some things that aren’t meant to be tamed or domesticated. Being wild and free . . . is who they are. To see them broken . . . like the horse I saw in the back of the truck . . . is almost too much for my heart to handle.

There are those who are so controlling and filled with ego, that they will go to any length to break a wild thing’s will. To show dominance. To have a trophy. To feel good about themselves because they are so lacking in confidence and will themselves.

Sometimes they think it’s for the wild thing’s own good, either they break it or the world will do it. It’s perceived as an act of love.

Let me break you . . . so that you won’t have to suffer the pain of the world breaking you.

What a tangled web human’s weave.

In my chart . . . I’m about as wild and untamed as they get.

I had such willfulness when I was younger. To the point that I had no concept of asking for permission to do anything. If I was playing with some toys in the house and suddenly had an image of the park flash into my mind . . . then I’d simply stand up and walk out the house and go to the park.

I can’t imagine how many heart attacks I gave my parents. I knew what I knew, and I knew what I wanted. What they wanted did not register into my awareness at all. It didn’t even make sense to me. What did my wants and needs have to do with them?

My dad is from the Appalachian mountains. You don’t get away with shit when you’re from the Appalachian mountains. You either do as you’re told by your parents, or your ass is grass.

My ass was frequently grass.

This comes from having to survive in very harsh conditions in the mountains. My dad’s family is from Irish heritage. The Irish weren’t really wanted over here. So they were forced into the areas that nobody else was able to survive, and forced to find a way to survive. And they did.

I come from strong stock.

But it also forced the families into living in constant survival mode. This means everything is a life or death circumstance. This means, when your parents tell you to go do something, you don’t sit there and whine and break down that you’re scared. It means you suck it up and get your ass out there, or everyone may die.

So then the getting your ass whipped every time you disobey becomes understandable. It’s to keep you from dying. It *is* being done from a place of love. The thing is, after a few generations . . . you no longer remember why it was done, only that it is.

So even though I didn’t grow up in those circumstances, I was raised as if I was. But obviously, something needs to change. This means that eventually in one of the generations, someone is going to be treated that way as a child . . . but they’re going to have to find the strength and will to overcome it and NOT break the will of their own children.

And that someone would need to have an enormous amount of will.

So . . . ta-da.

As my favorite shirt said when I was growing up, “Here comes trouble”.

All I know, is that my dad must’ve REALLY loved me. Because that man did not back off or give up in trying to get me to understand the rules. I would’ve been exhausted trying to raise me.

My mom’s family is more from a refined societal background. I supposed considered more “civilized”. But the dark side to Libra, or the sign of refined manners and all things beautiful and harmonious, is in becoming so passive that you basically check out of doing anything for yourself.

So my dad did severe disciplining, and my mom stood back and did nothing and just kind of checked out and became a victim. Libra can also be kind of judgey. Sit and judge the “animalstic” behavior of others, while not seeing their own part in what is playing out and not doing anything about it for themselves.

My dad always looked like the bad guy. My mom always looked like a victim. But if one had the ability to look at the energetic dynamics playing underneath the surface of what was being shown . . . and I did and I do . . . then you can see that my mom was equally at fault.

But our society is only interested in making judgments based on what can be seen and proven, and so until we get past such juvenile thinking . . . we will continue to have aggressors and victims and cannot progress past wars and people going hungry.

So I’m not interested in hearing that I was severely abused. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. It doesn’t matter. All I’m interested in, is stopping the bullshit from continuing past my generation.

However, I do need to recognize what happened when I was younger so that I can put myself back together and be an agent of true change in the world.

My will was broken when I was younger. It was so severe, that I literally broke my lower back when I was around 6 or 7.

I was in Germany and sledding by myself. The snow was so slick from all the people sledding earlier in the day, that my sled went way too fast. In short I ended up face down in the middle of the road, paralyzed from the waist down. And down the hill to my right was a big ass car coming, and they weren’t going to be able to see me in time.

So I closed my eyes and pulled on everything within me, and I willed myself to move. I didn’t want to die SO BAD . . . that I literally willed my paralyzed self to move enough to get to the sidewalk. I got out of the way in time, and the car stopped anyways to ask if I was okay. I said I was fine.

I spent the next hours in excruciating pain crawling an inch at a time to get back to my building and up the stairs. The whole time I was willing myself better. By the time I got to my mom, who was thankfully at a neighbors on the first floor instead of our fourth floor, all I could manage to get out of my mouth was that I had a stomach ache. I said I wanted to throw up.

So she gave me Pepto-Bismol and had me lay down. That was the last I thought about my lower back, until years later as an adult, when I got a 360 degree x-ray at a chiropractor’s office and the guy’s eyes about fell out of his head. He wanted to know when I had broken my back. I looked, and yes . . . it was scary looking . . . but mostly because it wasn’t until then that I had understood fully what I had done all those years ago.

It had snapped, twisted a little and fused itself back together, causing a slight curve in my spine.

So will. I haz it. Or I did.

After that day . . . my will became less and less. Because I was young I had a lot of energy still . . . but never quite the willfulness I had before. I quit fighting things so much. I quit wanting things my way.

I had been broken. Literally.

I do believe that things happen how they’re meant to. I needed to know life without my willfulness so that I did understand the Libra side of things. And the only way that was going to happen, is if it was severe enough.

Once I had done what I needed to in that broken state . . . it was time for me to heal that break in me and come back to myself.

So while staring into the eyes of the horse . . . I began to remember a previous existence from when I was a younger girl.

A time when I had such spirit and a strong will to live. A time when my spirit ran free and I believed I could do anything.

A time when I wasn’t afraid of being myself around others.

I’m returning to that part of me, but there’s a difference between now and then.

Back then, I didn’t know what it was that I had that the other’s around me lacked. I didn’t know what set me apart from anyone else. I didn’t know what to call the energy and joy and spunk that naturally came out of me.

But now I can see that it was will. It was confidence. It was an open-heartedness to life. It was love. It was joy and hope. It was the essence of life itself. A flame of life that lives within me.

After having gone without it for so long, I now know the value of what I hold inside of me. I know how rare and precious it is in the current world, and it’s up to me to protect and guard it . . . to never let it go out in me again.

I am and have something of value.

When I’m respected and valued by others, I am more than happy to share all I have with others.

But try to take it from me by force, or keep it for your own, or treat me like I’m not worth your time . . .

There exists a black smoke cloud entity invisible to the human eye. It is able to move in and out of humans at will. It has an intelligence.

We’re all aware of it at some level, but choose to repress it because it scares us.

It doesn’t have any actual power. It doesn’t have any creative force or life giving energy of its own. It’s able to mimic and learn, but not create something new all on its own.

However, it is able to convince you to use your creative energy to get done what it wants. All it has to do, is play upon your weakness. It finds your weakness and convinces you that your fears are real and true. That’s all it needs to do. That’s all it is able to do . . . is convince you that your fears are true.

Because as soon as a human believes something to be true . . . they use their own creative force and energy to bring it about. And so it’s nearly as effective as the black smoke cloud entity having its own creative power.

I’m not using metaphors, btw. This black smoke cloud entity is very real. It is the actual sourceoffear.

It’s able to cloak itself . . . mimic you well enough . . . that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish it from your own thoughts. It’s subtle enough to not set off any alarms that it’s coming from an outside source.

As long as you believe your fears to be true, you become trapped in a jail cell of your own making. You get stuck in an energetic web of your own creative energy.

The greatest “power” this black smoke cloud entity has, is in its invisibility. As long as nobody is aware of it, it is able to move through undetected wreaking havoc and maintaining control.

It especially targets those with lots of life force or creative energy. The more life force, light, love, creative energy you have . . . the more the black smoke cloud entity wants you for its own purposes.

Some of the brightest beings currently here are paralyzed in fear due to this combination of incredible light and a lack of awareness of the black smoke cloud entity.

You can see where in your life this will show up the most in your natal chart, by looking for where Pluto is located and what he touches. In those areas of your life, is where the black smoke cloud entity will show up the heaviest and therefore create a fear surrounding that area of your chart.

It can come through your loved ones, yourself, events and circumstances. Anywhere the black smoke cloud entity can move and is allowed to influence, it can manipulate and use.

The black smoke cloud entity is not invincible, however.

It cannot control you once you become aware of it and refuse to play its game. It will try to scare the living bejeezers out of you with what looks like very real threats . . . but it cannot actually harm you.

It cannot control you when you swallow your pride and take personal responsibility for yourself. Even if you have a weak moment and it’s able to get through and start scaring you, take personal responsibility for moving back out of fear. Take personal responsibility to gain strength and push yourself past the fear and out of the clutches of the black smoke cloud entity.

Belief and faith. Believe in things really being beautiful and loving. Have faith that the beautiful and loving things in life are real. If you allow yourself to be a Pollyanna with your whole open heart despite the ugliness that appears to be happening on the outside of this world . . . the black smoke cloud entity loses its hold on you . . . it loses its power over you.

When you have the courage to believe in love and happiness, and to act as if it is true despite your fear . . . it loses its power over you.

When you refuse to believe the reality it would have you believe, it makes you stronger and the black smoke cloud entity weaker.

You can 100% guarantee that whatever it is you are afraid of, is the influence of this entity. It’s the battle that wages on inside of all of us. Who we are versus what this black smoke cloud entity wishes us to believe because while we do . . . it’s in control of this world.

When you stop believing that your fears are real . . . when you truly believe in your heart . . . then the black smoke cloud entity is forced to set you free.

Forgiveness.

When you can see that the fear and craziness erupting is more to do with this black smoke cloud entity flowing through the masses trying to snag any weaknesses of the heart and exploiting it to hurt the rest of us and weaken our own hearts . . . then you can start to feel more compassion and forgiveness for what we are all going through right now.

Not everything is as it seems. Just because someone flies off the handle and kills people, doesn’t mean it was the person themselves. Their only fault is having a moment of weakness in their faith of their heart. That’s why it is not for us to judge others and condemn them, because we cannot see what battle they are fighting below the surface.

This unseen fight and battle that the black smoke cloud entity insists on being kept a secret . . . hidden. He wants us to lash out on each other and accuse and blame each other . . . because it creates even more fear and isolation and division between us . . . and it strengthens the black smoke cloud entity.

Not coincidentally, today, transiting Uranus is in exact opposition to my natal Pluto which is conjunct my descendant. Uranus is about breaking free. It’s in the sign of Aries . . . the warrior . . . where my rising sign, Venus, Mars, and South Node all reside. Aries also rules the head.

It’s my 1st house, house of self. I’ve been facing this black smoke cloud entity head on my entire life. I’m able to see it and be aware of it and call it out on its own shit. It has gone through all of my loved ones in my life trying to get at me.

If they have any weakness, flaws, doubts, fears . . . this black smoke cloud entity jumps on it and wreaks havoc both for the individual I love, as well as for me. This has been happening since the day I was born.

I have gone through periods in my life of being afraid to let anyone into my life, because I knew the black smoke cloud entity would start its shit. Two different boyfriends actually woke up in the middle of the night, having a very literal black smoke fog over them and trying to choke the life out of them . . . using their fear of course.

It’s been a battle within me to keep my vision clear . . . to understand that it’s not the individual themselves that are hurting me, but this entity. It’s been a battle within me to keep my vision of myself clear, and to not believe the things that others think and accuse me of based on their fears that are being played upon. A battle within to keep my strength up even when others start associating the black smoke cloud entity with me . . . because it always seems to come around when they are around me, and start to fear me as if I’m the source.

And it’s been a battle within me to keep forgiving and remembering what is really going on . . . what the truth of the situation of the world is. To keep persevering. To not give up my belief in love and my heart. To have faith that one day, this black smoke cloud entity will be unmasked and everyone will see for themselves the truth and what has been going on.

“Being alone . . . that’s your thing.”

That’s my weakness . . . my wound that is exploited by the black smoke cloud entity. My pain and my wound of being alone and the fear of continuing to be alone. That quote is what was said to me in a dream last fall. The black smoke cloud entity has no mercy. It has shredded that fear within me over and over.

In the last week, as the opposition between the current transiting Uranus and my natal Pluto has been getting closer, the black smoke cloud entity has been working overtime.

In one dream that became lucid, a dark black shadow being was right on me. I could feel it with my physical body in my bedroom. Trying to scare and intimidate me. It unnerved me a hair . . . but this has been a really long and intense battle between us . . . and I’m really tired of its shit.

And then one morning as I was waking up I got very clearly the message, “You’re a smart girl, back off.”

It was very distinctly a warning. One that I just couldn’t seem to get rattled about. There’s a point where you just don’t care anymore. I’m tired of fighting. Threaten and scream all you want, but when you’re just bone-soul weary . . . it’s like, “Oh yeah? Well, fuck you.”

Omg you guys, so many puzzle pieces just came together for me and I’m so excited to share.

I was doing my usual morning “laying on the floor and contemplating the meaning of everything” while trying to relax my body so I could feel my feelers.

I felt how my neck and lower jaw muscles were tensing in order to stop emotions from showing. I thought, “Hmm . . that’s right, I do remember as a little girl whenever I wanted to cry but was in public or around someone, I would stop my tears by tensing my neck area.”

Okay, cool . . . so I was talking to my body and saying, “Hey, it’s super cool that you learned how to stop yourself from crying, but it’s getting old and I kind of don’t want to do it anymore.” But from a feeling place, not necessarily with words. I find it works best for me if I emote or feel things towards my body as a way to communicate.

So *then* I became aware of something going on in my head area. It wasn’t what I would refer to or call my “mind”, but something . . . I guess surrounding the mind? It’s like it was the top half of my skull, and emanating from the area outside of it. I only had to wonder about it for a second before the word “will” popped into my head.

Yes, of course! Will . . . Aries . . . Aries rules the head! I felt it being the thing that was instructing or giving the orders so to speak, for my neck area (ruled by Taurus . . . it’s our “voice”). But not only that, I felt all of the areas in my body that were under the direction of “will” in my body. This is TOTALLY fascinating because my Chiron (or deepest wound and where we become the healer) is in Taurus (rules neck/throat . . . but also represents physical body) and in my 1st house . . . the house of Aries (which my 1st house happens to be ruled by Aries . . . go figure).

So THEN, I was feeling all of these areas affected and being directed by Aries and what came to me was “adrenal system”. The fight or flight or freeze response. Our instinctive, animalistic response when there is danger. This is ALSO ruled by Aries –>Instinct/survival.

At this point I’m already in amazement at the correlations between what I’m experiencing and connecting and how they also line up in astrological rulerships . . . and things that aren’t readily able to be connected. We tend to learn key words about each sign, etc. . . . but it’s not necessarily obvious why they all belong to a sign, planet, or house. So seeing these connections in me and THEN seeing that it matches what is in astrology is what had me going all O.O during all of this.

So anyways, I was seeing in vision and actually experiencing in my physical body the areas of my body being told by my “will” that I was in “danger” every time I felt my emotions and feelings. Every.single.time. So I feel any of my own feelings, and my body goes “go!go!go! This is not a drill, we are in serious danger, activate the “do not show what you’re feeling” sequence!” and the various areas of my body go into response to stop the feelers from coming out.

Then I kept having a scene from my childhood repeat over and over. It was a defining moment in my childhood. I had done something to get myself in trouble and I was getting one hellacious whipping, and I was told that it wasn’t going to stop until I stopped crying.

Boom. There it was. Showing my emotions and feelings put me in serious danger (according to my instinctive body), and therefore I go into a fight, flight, freeze response any time they try to show themselves. Hence the intense fear any time I try to express what I feel.

When we are children we’re more open and flexible, so it didn’t have a huge immediate impact when I was younger. I was still able to return to my playing and eventually forget what happened and get back to playing Barbies or whatever. Kids are resilient like that. But my physical body never forgot it, and so it decided to take care of it at an instinctive level, rather than bother me with it.

As I get older, however, it takes more and more of a toll on me. I can’t bounce back as easily when I get triggered. The response has bled over from only happening when I wanted to cry, to happening any time I feel emotions or feelings at all. INCLUDING feeling joy, love, happiness.

What’s more . . . and the part that has truly been tragic in my life . . . it happens anytime I’m around anyone that I care deeply about. I get near someone I care deeply about, and my system goes into survival mode and I shut down. In order to compensate for this, and in order to find any comfort or peace in my life . . . I’ve had to push away, distance, and cut off from everyone I’ve ever cared about in my life.

The only one I wasn’t able to, was my son. He told me when he was 7 that one of his reasons for coming into this life was to show me love, and now that has even more profound meaning than ever.

I have had to survive on my own for so long, that I had learned to deal with it. I was “at peace” in a way with it . . . even if I didn’t like it or understand it. I can push away lovers, family, friends. But my son. The universe set it up so that I couldn’t push him away. I was the only person available to take care of him and raise him. My mommy instinct wouldn’t let me abandon him. I didn’t want him to be alone in the world.

So for the next 18 years this horrific battle ensued in me. Perpetual fight or flight any time I was around my son, but also being unable to get away from it. It forced me to face those demons in me. It forced me to push past the terror and fear because as many parents understand . . . you will literally go through hell for your children. I might not do it for myself, and I might not do it for another person . . . but I sure as hell will do it for my son.

Even if I was screaming at the top of my lungs (silently inside) in searing pain from the constant adrenal response 24/7 year after year, which did result in several breakdowns. Which is another interesting correlation . . . Aries is a fire. Fire burns and purifies. Adrenaline being a very Aries response . . . burns when it keeps happening and it’s not needed and results in anxiety, etc. In an effort to overcome it . . . I ended up burning and purifying through everything that wasn’t real in me.

It’s also why I always end up alone. Again . . . Aries. My south node (something you do *too* well) is Aries. North node (direction you want to head in this life) is Libra. I want to be with others. My soul no longer wants to survive alone . . . it wants to thrive with others.

All of these pieces and realizations are just blowing me away . . . this is amazing to me. It seems so clear.

I shut down when my ex came last summer. I was picking everything apart trying to understand why, and obviously it isn’t any *one* thing . . . nothing is that simple . . . but now, with this understanding . . .

I pushed the love of my life away because of this. That’s why I can’t let it go. It’s the same situation as with my son. That push and pull fight inside of me. They are my heart . . . and I can’t abandon my heart . . . but to feel my heart means to be in shut down survival mode which kills my spirit.

I had learned how to get past it with my son. But then I got into a relationship which is a different dynamic, and I hadn’t learned how to get past it from that angle. So I thought it was the relationship that was wrong, and fell back into my old habits of pushing the person away . . . if only to get a break from the searing pain of adrenaline that burns my whole body.

I got to express my feelings. MY feelings. My only thought when writing yesterday was, “What do I feel inside my heart?” I wasn’t thinking about how it might make someone else feel. I wasn’t thinking about what others might think of me. I wasn’t trying to curb or hide my feelings so that others didn’t become concerned about my state of mind. I simply expressed my very own feelings that I get to have and feel and hug.

Mine, mine, mine.

It feels really good to get to have and express feelings without judging them. Without having to act on them. Without having to defend or explain them. Without worrying about someone else trying to take responsibility for them, or fix them, or try and tell me why I should or shouldn’t be feeling them. {Big sigh of relief.}

They weren’t based on trying to skirt psychological criteria for various mental disorders in an attempt to not look psycho, crazy, or like I’m having a breakdown. They weren’t based on an agenda or ulterior motives. They weren’t any kind of attempt to make a point or model anything. There was no focus on consequences, potential outcomes, or effects of my words.

It was freeing. Moon in Sagittarius –> A need to feel free to feel what I feel.

Do you know what kind of sucked about yesterday’s post?

The absolute silence surrounding it.

Nobody was going to touch that post with a ten foot pole, fluff you very much.

I swear to god I could almost hear everyone stop breathing at once, and very carefully try to tip toe away without being noticed . . . that’s how bad the silence was.

I don’t even understand it, I never have. This is quite common for me, btw. I open and share my heart, and people scatter like cockroaches do when a light gets switched on. While in the past it has led me to doubt my own feelings or wonder if something is wrong with me . . . anymore I’m very sure about what I feel deep inside me and I know there’s nothing wrong with it.

I can’t help but get the feeling that others are more focused on what I’m expecting in response from them, then they are about what it is they feel themselves. Almost like people assume or think that I’m looking for comfort, help, love, advice . . . as if I’m something that is broken or in need of fixing.

Except . . . I’m not. Unless I’m specifically asking for help or advice, that is not my reason for sharing things. I just need to feel what I’m feeling, and I also have a need to share what those feelings are. I don’t need help or advice because in the act of feeling and sharing what I do, it clears the situation for me and then I know exactly what I need to do.

What would be AWESOME, although I’m certainly not going to force anyone, would be if others would share what THEY are feeling inside. I don’t need to know what you think or feel about what I wrote . . . what did it evoke and make YOU feel? It doesn’t even have to be related. If, while reading my post, it evoked an emotion or memory of your own and it doesn’t even seem related . . . share that!

When you truly share what you’re feeling without trying to explain it, or feel sorry for it, defend it, etc. . . . it feels magnificent! It feels like a huge weight is taken off of you.

I don’t WANT people to praise or pay credence to my awesomeness (unless they truly feel it and that’s what they want to do). What I want is for people to be able to feel and own their very own feelings. Don’t make it about me or others. Make it about you. Relish in your feelings! Roll around in them like a pig in manure. Don’t judge them or try to see them as good or bad or try to see the other side or feel you have to justify them.

Just FEEL what you truly feel inside!

Feeling what you feel inside means focusing on just your feelings unattached to what anyone else thinks or feels.

With my Gemini Sun/Jupiter conjunction, I’m very mercurial in nature. What I feel will change from minute to minute. It’s where I shine. With those two things in opposition to my Neptune/Moon conjunction in Sagittarius (a link to my natal chart here if you’re an astrologer and interested: astrology) my feelings are all over the place. That is both where I am at home and where I shine. I must be allowed to feel whatever I’m feeling without it being a huge fluffing deal, or I will suffer greatly in health.

They flow through me. They come and go. While they are there . . . I express them . . . when it’s time for them to leave, I let them go. This is as natural to me as breathing . . . and yet on paper it looks like I’m a mental bi-polar case. That’s not seeing me for who I am . . . that’s being afraid of who I am and trying to control it or change it. Just because it makes others uncomfortable (especially Capricorn energy), doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong or needs to be repressed or changed. That’s a limited and narrow way of viewing life.

Mercury is the trickster. Anyone with Gemini or Virgo energy has this kind of nature in them, and I’m sure struggle in a similar way as I do. Mercury is the understanding that nothing is permanent, and also that nothing should be taken so seriously. This is in direct conflict with Pluto/Scorpio/8th house, where everything is deadly serious. Everything is dead still. What something is for one moment, is that way F O R E V E R !!!!!!!!

Mercury is all . . . “No.”

Gemini is about laughing at ourselves and not taking ourselves so seriously. It’s about seeing paradoxes and contradictions in all of life. Libra focuses more on moderation and balance between duality . . . Gemini is able to fly through, around, and between them like a master gymnast and is very comfortable there. Like kids. Kids are very Gemini in nature . . . very curious, very in wonder and in awe of the simplest things around them because it’s all new.

Kids say the darndest things . . . because they’re said in innocence. They aren’t in a dark serious adult mood . . . they’re just saying what they’re actually seeing or observing in the environment around them. “Why? Why? Why? But how come?” is Gemini. The only absolute in the world of Gemini is that there are no absolutes. If you try to pin them to any one thing or say, “but you said this and now you said this”, you will get nowhere with them. Their response is most likely to be, “but in that moment I was feeling this and in this moment I’m feeling this . . . they are two different situations.”

It’s about being in the moment and being flexible. It’s a constant state of opening to receive the moment . . . experience that moment (observe, watch, learn all you can about it while it’s there) . . . and then releasing that moment because you need to be open to receive the next moment coming in. It is entirely possible to live in this way . . . in a conscious way . . . and have everything work out like magic without worrying or forcing things to be a certain way. But it makes those who aren’t comfortable with this way of living . . . very, very, nervous. And their nervousness about the Gemini’s way of being . . . makes Gemini feel very nervous about themselves.

So for me, this is all about getting to my true feelings (Sagittarius moon) and sharing with others (Gemini Sun). If I have any intent, it’s in others sharing their true feelings (or even trying it out for the first time) and also sharing it with others (or trying it out for the first time). Not about judging or psychoanalyzing (Pluto in Libra . . . conjunct my descendant) or even trying to help others with their feelings. The point is just to even be aware of our OWN feelings and getting comfortable in sharing them despite other’s judgment and projections and analyzing.

I’ve done those things to others in the past . . . why? Well, because others were always doing it to me when I was younger. I was just trying to be silly, playful, mimicking Gemini . . . but holy hell were the things I did taken so seriously and taken so completely out of context. What I did wasn’t seen in innocence, but always as if I were some guilty master mind manipulator. So I thought everything was much more serious than it really was, and that my feelings weren’t as innocent as I really felt inside . . . and it led to me disconnecting from my true self.

Well I’m reconnecting. I’m going to feel what I feel and I’m going to share what I feel, even though it goes against everything we’ve been led to believe as a culture and society. Even if I’m the only one who believes in my innocence and my mental stability. Even if I’m left alone in my open heart sharing (which does hurt my feelers, btw) because nobody else is brave enough to do the same.

I hate being left alone. But at least when I’m being true to myself and being who I am in all of my mercurial, open-hearted, silly, paradoxical ways . . . I’m truly happy and joyful in life. Which is a lot more than I can say for the majority of humanity.

Here’s the way to read my posts whenever you start taking what I’m saying WAY too Life/Death serious . . . pretend there is a little girl hiding in plain sight (such as behind a sheer curtain with her legs poking out) . . . with her hands covering her mouth trying to stifle her giggles because she thinks she’s being way more clever than she is, but is having fun regardless.